The New Orleans Pelicans King Cake Baby Mascot Is Basically a War Crime

So, it's safe to say, I'm not a fan of mascots. They're creepy. They have giant dead eyes. They always look like they're secretly planning to murder the very fans that they've been hired to entertain. Me and Robin Lopez see eye to eye on this issue. But even I, someone who hates mascots, can admit that once in a while, on the rarest of occasions, a mascot can seem adorable. This is not one of those times.

The New Orleans Pelicans have a primary mascot named Pierre. He's got the soulless dead eyes of all mascots, but he's a great improvement over his team's original, nightmare-inducing design.

But neither of those hold a candle to the Pelicans' terrifying, walking horror movie of a mascot: The King Cake Baby. In theory, it's a nice idea. It's a tribute to the culture of New Orleans which includes eating King Cakes at Mardi Gras. Hidden inside the cake is a small plastic baby. Traditionally, whoever gets the baby in their piece of cake is thought to have good luck. The Pelicans took this idea and decided it would be better if the baby weren't small and plastic, but instead giant and seemingly taken from a Goosebumps book cover. I mean look at this monstrosity:

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